IE keyboard shortcuts

Here are some handy keyboard shortcuts for Internet Explorer.

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They said what? - This month's quote is from Mark Twain

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

OUCH! - painful use of English...

Signage for tourists

Continuing our series of signs that have been displayed for the benefit of English speaking tourists, here are some more classics.

In a laundry in Rome:

"LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME. "

In a tourist agency in Czechoslovakia:

"TAKE ONE OF OUR HORSE-DRIVEN CITY TOURS. WE GUARANTEE NO MISCARRIAGES."

In an airline ticket office in Copenhagen :

"WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS. "

On the door of a Moscow hotel room (during Communist rule) :

"IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST VISIT TO THE USSR, YOU ARE WELCOME TO IT. "

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Clever sub-totalling

Sometimes it's helpful to get subtotals in your Excel spreadsheet. Here's a tip to make sub-totalling easy. For this to work you must have column headings labelled (Insert | Name | Label...). The screen examples here illustrate how the sub-totalling works. Follow these steps.

• Select all of the data (including the heading row).
• From the menu bar select Data | Sort and select the applicable heading, in this example, Supplier.

• From the menu bar select Data | Subtotals and select the applicable column where the data is to be displayed, in this example, the $ column.
• Click OK.

The result looks like this:

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Autocorrect

Word has a list of common errors that it will automatically correct for you. For instance, if you type 'teh' Word makes the assumption that you really meant 'the' and corrects it as you type. You can also set up other corrections if you tend to mis-type words that you use often, i.e. 'docment' can be set up to change to 'document' automatically.

A further handy use of Autocorrect is to use it for words that you type often. The steps below show you how to set up an autocorrect entry for the word 'documentation'.

• From the Word menubar, select Tools | AutoCorrect. About halfway down the screen there are two boxes: Replace and With.
• In the With box on the right, type documentation. In the Replace box on the left, type dmn. (Don't type a real word here - it needs to be something that is not used anywhere else.)
• Click Add, then click OK.
• In your document, type dmn and press the spacebar (or TAB key, or <Enter>) and hey presto - your word is typed correctly for you.

You can set up as many autocorrect entries as you like. The only thing is that you'll have to remember them, so only set up entries for words that you constantly use, e.g. your company name.

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About our work

Customer Success Story:

This month we are featuring the work we are currently doing for AgResearch (in conjunction with the funders MAF, and FertResearch).

We will leave it up to you which side of the Global Warming debate you are on. However, pretty much everyone would agree that managing and minimising pollution is a good thing. In New Zealand the farming sector is working to reduce its environmental impact. Within the pastoral sector (which makes up the largest part of NZ agriculture), there is a special emphasis on stock management as well as the effect of fertilisers, effluents and animal feed supplements. If not managed properly, there can be detrimental effects not only to the farm's sustainability but also increased losses of nutrients to adjacent rivers, streams and lakes or larger emissions of greenhouse gases to the air.

The challenge is how to minimise these environmental impacts on the farm whilst maintaining a profitable enterprise. This is where the work being done by AgResearch (in conjunction with MAF and FertResearch) comes in. They have developed the OVERSEER® Nutrient Budgets model which is a computer tool that allows the farm to be modelled. The model is then used to determine the farm management practices that will achieve best farm productivity whilst minimising environmental impacts.

This is a brilliant system that makes a contribution to the farm, to the environment, and to our green reputation overseas (which is crucial to exports – agriculture makes up about half of all New Zealand's merchandise exports ).

Our contribution is that we are creating the help system for the next version of the Overseer model. It will be delivered as an online help system, as well as downloadable PDFs.

We're learning an awful lot about effluent!

Word 2007

The much-maligned 2007 ribbon!

For the most part, these tips cover Word 2003. We're aware of course, that a growing percentage of our subscribers are moving to Word 2007. In blogs and forums around the world there have been howls of protest about the Ribbon format for Office 2007 and what is perceived to be the dumbing down of Word.

It seems that the main gripe is that with Word 2003 we could set up our customised toolbars to suit the work that we do. Word 2007 has moved away from the toolbar style to a customisable ribbon that really isn't particularly customisable at all. Well, not in the way we're used to.

Here's a tip if you can't find something that you used in Word 2003. The old keyboard shortcuts still work!

Office 2007 uses the colourful 'Office ball' in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. This ball contains the 'branches' to all the customary functions that were on the main menu toolbar in previous versions.

If you look at the rectangular box-looking areas that enclose the icons that allow you to change font style, font size etc. you'll notice on about the fourth line below there is a Group name: Font, Page, Style. Then there is a little 'etched' box to the immediate right of each of the group names. When you click that etched box you will find you have access to many of the Word 2003 dialog boxes.

Word user forums largely bemoan the change to the ribbon. Of course the biggest problem is the fact that for something we use every day we're very resistant to change, especially when that change means that we can't even find the area in which we need to be working. It's just a learning curve, and Microsoft are using new technologies to bring us up to speed.

The advanced talk is that Word 2010 will still have the ribbon, but with more capabilities for customisation. It seems to have a more intuitive interface too, but only time will tell about that.

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Free Booklets

Booklet: Tips on Getting Started with your first Mail Merge.

Booklet:Tips on Word Templates

If you would like either of our complimentary booklets just email us with your name and address and the name of the booklet that you would like and we'll post it out to you*.

*Offer only available to New Zealand addresses.

From our readers

The problem

Colin asks, "Can you explain how I can save my favourites, as a block to a file, rather than one at a time?"

The solution

I've made the assumption that Colin is using Internet Explorer. The easiest way to do what he wants is to export the favourites. In fact 'export' in this context means sending the Favourites to a location where they're not normally stored. This is handy when you want to send them to another person via an email, or save them to a disk or pen drive, or save them to another file location on your current computer.

Follow these steps:

1. Run Internet Explorer and from the menu bar select File | Import and Export. Click the Next button.
2. Click Export Favorites and then click the Next button.
3. Click the topmost Favorites folder and then click the Next button. (This will save all Favourites in subfolders along with the main folder.)
4. You now need to decide where you want the favourites file to be stored. Either accept the default, or browse to a different file path. (Note that the file is called bookmark.htm, or if saving to a pen drive bookmark.mht which is an archive file.)
5. Click Export.

When you view your saved favourites by opening the bookmark file, you'll see that all your favourites show up as links in a single Web page. Click on any link and it will open that page in Internet Explorer. This makes it really easy to send on to another person via email by using the attachment method. Alternatively, you can select all the text, copy it, and paste it into a Word document.

Look - no vowels!

Are there any words in the English language with no vowels?

Yes, there are two:

Rhythm and Syzygy

Well, we all know what 'rhythm' means.

But what does 'syzygy' mean?

Syzygy can be any two related things, either alike, or opposite.

In astronomical terms it is the conjunction or opposition of two heavenly bodies; a point in the orbit of a body, as the moon, at which it is in conjunction with or in opposition to the sun.

M, Syzygy of moon
S, Sun; E, Earth

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